


Woodland whispers my name

by Llyneth



Series: No safe path to lead me home [1]
Category: The Path (Video Game)
Genre: Carmen's POV with references to Scarlet Ginger and Ruby, Carmen-centric, Character death? It's as ambiguous as the game, Horror, Oneshot, a take on The Path where the girls actually react to their sisters' disappearances, and also talk about things that happen in the woods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 15:31:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11580939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llyneth/pseuds/Llyneth
Summary: Carmen knows she'll venture into the woods in search of her wolf.The only question is when.





	Woodland whispers my name

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, so. I'm meant to be writing other things but i just felt compelled to write a short... thing. 
> 
> It's in Carmen's pov, with a brief guest appearance from Scarlet. 
> 
> Basically i've been watching LPs, following the lore and theories of the path since day one of release (2009...wow i'm old) but never got round to playing it myself. Until now! So here's a thing. Enjoy!

My blood thunders in my ears as i approach the campsite, the rhythmic pounding a drumbeat that i sway my hips to.

It should draw every man's eye to me - and it does usually - but the solitary figure before me just continues his work, unmoved by my flirtations. He doesn't even notice me, so intent on driving his axe into a tree that his gaze never wanders, his focus narrowed to a single sharp point.

It _hurts_.

I'm the only person here yet he won't even acknowledge me, won't shift his eyes for the briefest moment to my body. To my eyes. To my lips perfectly crafted into a tantalizing pout, engineered to make pupils widen and throats swallow.

_I'm invisible, a ghost._

Without his roving eyes - his, someone else's,  everyone's... _anyone's_ will do - eating me up, drinking me in, devouring me whole like a decadent feast, i'm nothing. I may as well not exist. With every flash of a smile and arch of my back i purposefully pull in their judgemental looks, turning their admonishing gaze, before long and without fail, to burning hunger. Even if their fire consumes me, even if there's nothing left of me in the end but ash, i still have their love, their passion, the pieces of themselves they give away unknowingly,  little by little as they sway to my siren song. 

With every pupil blown wide in lust i can control them, make them dance helplessly to my maddening tune. Make them love me, make them stay with me. 

I'll never be alone again...

But my smiles do nothing - hold no charm, have no sway - when no one is looking.

And he's definitely not looking.

So I reach forward, try another tactic to make myself the center of his world. It's a game now - like hide and seek, one person chasing and the other hiding, waiting with baited breath for the moment that they're found. Hand on hip, i draw him into my game, playfully stealing his cap, plucking it straight from his balding head in a way that refuses to be ignored. It makes no difference to his diligent wood chopping though. He refuses to indulge me even when i sidle up to him, get right in his space. My proximity does nothing except reveal something i hadn't noticed before: his face is a cloudy blur like a bad photograph, his body completely unremarkable except for the most generic of elements: Black hair, average build, average height... a woodsman in red plaid straight out of any everyday fantasy. 

Nothing more than a dream, a flight of fancy, one that i've had countless times before. A dream of a man in the woods who will not bend to my will, nor accept my submission. A man so uninteresting to me that i can't even dream up a face, leaving him with a brown-grey smudge in its place. 

After all, it _doesn't matter_ who he is. He could be anyone. What matters is the pull i feel to that place, the drive to seduce someone who doesn't want me, doesn't look my way. There's a challenge there, deep in the woods where the lumberjack lives, a challenge that might be fatal to win.

It might be just as bad to lose.

I'm itching to find out though, one way or another, even though it might destroy me. This feeling, this thrum of want... it grows stronger every day, harder to resist the call of the wild. And i know where to look. He's there, waiting for me.

All i need to do is step off the path.

The certainty of it, the sheer wrongness and rightness of it all jars me awake, leaving me blinking blearily into a dim, mostly empty room. 

_Oh, that's right. My younger sisters are gone.  
_

In the space they left behind is Scarlet, pacing slowly, phone in hand as she glances nervously at the door.

_**All** of them._

Ruby ventured out last, with a roll of her eyes and a promise to stay on the path, but i guess she broke that promise. She hasn't returned from Grandma's, nor phoned home to be picked up, and it's been several hours. Scarlet wouldn't be so worried if she had, or hovering by the phone and the door with her car keys in hand, clenched like a weapon through her fingers.

She flits her eyes towards me and sees i'm awake, stopping her pacing and sending me a tired, strained smile with a slightly desperate edge. Her mouth opens to speak but then it closes again, eyes glazing and sliding from mine to the ground.

After a prolonged moment her whole body freezes, dropping the phone, eyes round and wide with fear, catching my gaze and holding it as she moves to the table, reaches for the basket lying there. Her hand shakes as she leans forward, as if she's resisting the movement with everything she has. Possessed by some power that she cannot break free of, her hand curls around the handle and she walks stiffly to the door.

"Mother wants me to take this to Grandma's house" She says to the red room, her voice monotone but for the way it quivers at the end, an unsuccessful attempt at holding in her anxiety.

The bang the door makes as it closes is strangely final.

-

Times passes and i spend it staring out the window, striking poses with a black hat and imagining the way my silhouette captures every eye. It's a distraction from thoughts of my sisters' fates and the nagging certainty that Scarlet will not be coming home either. 

_"I'm next "_ I think, knowing absolutely that it's true, but not _how_ or _why_ i know it.

_After Ruby is Scarlet, after Scarlet is me. When she leaves i need to go, take that basket to Grandma's house and walk the path, disregarding Mother's warning. Meet the faceless man in my dreams that beckons me deep into the woods, see what awaits me there..._

_Disappear among the trees and never be seen again, Joining my other four lucky, unfortunate sisters._

But contrary to expectations my remaining sister _does_ return home: alone, white as a sheet and shaking with cold sweat but unharmed. It's a relief and a disappointment all at once and something about her wild eyes tells me she feels the same. Tells me she'll sleep this night in safety and walk the path again tomorrow, desperate to doom herself and avoid her destruction all at once.

She'll walk the safe path - just as we all have - as many times as it takes to gain the courage to leave it. I can't blame her for being tempted but it's a testament to her sensible nature that she's held out so long, keeping her head low as she blocks out the beautiful music that could spell her end.

There's a stage in the woods, the site of her heart's greatest yearning. We've talked about it.

Some of the others have even seen it.

A ruined white-grey stage with a bright red curtain and a wooden piano at its center, the origin of the haunting melodies but not the strange, unearthly singing that filters through the trees and onto the sunlit path. That's something else, a little girl in white that shepherds us home, or hides from us, or brings us into the very heart of danger...

The younger ones - adventurous, fearless, brimming with curiosity and most likely lost forever -  have explored beyond the path far more than me and Scarlet, but they always came back before, hand in hand with the little forest spirit whose mouth never moves when she sings.

Even Ruby, two years my junior and incurious about the natural world has ventured out and come back unscathed, wonder in her eyes and praise on her lips for the child's morbid and beautiful song.

Something has clearly changed though. About the forest, about Grandmother's house. When we first ignored our mother's advice we did so as one, every visit ending in hushed stories and gasps of amazement at the wonderful things we'd found, packed tightly together in our beds and whispering in the dark. It was exciting then, going out to explore a new world and reporting the things we'd discovered to our sisters. Sharing experiences, seeking out landmarks and plotting our own maps.

That was before the path became impossible to find once left, the woods disorientatingly unnavigable and filled with untrustworthy strangers.

Then the dreams began.

It was Ginger first, a little too bold, a little too carefree, running headlong into danger. There was a little girl in red, she had said, a girl she'd seen in her dreams, playing in a field of flowers. She was identical to the girl in white, maybe her twin. A relation of that girl, someone she trusted to lead her home. She couldn't be bad, could she?

So she sought her out, waded through the grass and between the sunbeams to find her, and find her she did.

But her pitch black eyes and the way she vanished into thin air as she got close startled her, sending Ginger flying back home in a panic, Mother's warning in her mind. She had called the house, desperate to be picked up and taken home, the basket abandoned somewhere among the shrubbery.

It reappeared on the path when the next sister went to deliver the food, the bread and wine intact and unspoiled despite several days passing. After that we made three new rules:

1\. don't stray too far from the path.

2\. Don't approach strangers in the forest. 

3\. If you stay a long time, remember to phone home so everyone knows you're alright.

But the rules, her scary experience, and the looming threat of something very wrong didn't stop Ginger. In a daze she left the house, basket in hand, muttering about the girl in red calling to her, needing to meet her there, deep in the woods where the prettiest flowers grow.

We never saw her again.

Oh, we searched. One by one, out in the woods, along the path... but there was nothing. No trace of her except the two dark purple feathers she always wore in her hair, left neatly arranged by Grandmother's door.

After that we shared our dreams, our nightmares, and vowed to always walk the brightly lit path.

An easy goal.

Or it should have been, before everything changed. Before the path grew dark, the sky stormy, an unnatural purple that only became vibrant blue sky again when we turned back, retraced our steps home on that bright path. Grandma grew distant too, still like death, eyes perpetually open as she lay unresponsive. Her creaking house, once filled with the sound of singing and happy memories became unfamiliar, the atmosphere tense and ominous. We could only curl next to her on the bed and wish for comfort, singing our safe song softly to ourselves as an attempt to soothe, to lull us into a dreamless sleep at her side.

Every time we woke our gifts - the uneaten bread and the undrunk wine - would be gone, crusts and bottle and all, leaving only the woven basket behind. As if she had waited for us to enter a deep slumber before rising and consuming it all in one go, then returning to her place under the covers.

What did she do while we slept away the hours in that room?

This question, the darkened sky, her haunted way, the sudden, total absence of our mother... it drove my sisters from the path and deep into the woods, each chasing after a dream far more vivid, far more real than our everyday lives.

One by one it swallowed us until only two were left, our hopes dangling by a thread over a fatal drop, the single strand fraying from the weight of us both.

But only one of us ever practiced self sacrifice.

And it was never me.

She's too bogged down, too burdened by the guilt of the other girls' disappearances to fight much longer. It shows in her hollow, bruised eye sockets, in her bitten fingernails and pink cheeks, puffy from tears. She blames herself. For not watching them, for letting them walk the path alone, for every second she got lost in daydreams of sheet music and silver hair...

She's giving in.

I see it. The thought of joining them wherever they are, of seeing them again at least one more time... it's a struggle to keep going, to keep walking that unchanging path again and again when every fibre of her being wants to step off it.

But she can go without fear now. I'm old enough to care for myself, her care - her selfless, immaculate, motherly care - isn't required anymore. She's free.

I see the thought cross her mind and i hold her close for a long time, knowing that tomorrow will be too late for goodbyes. It's a long, silent moment, heavy with unsaid things.

She catches me eyes and smiles, a small, pained smile, the last i'll ever see.

-

Morning comes and the basket is gone, Scarlet along with it.

I wait by the window - my favourite place in this apartment - until it's time, just standing there, drinking in the scenery that i will likely never see again. The overcast sky, the murder of crows sitting on cables strung between the houses, the fighting couples shouting at each other on the street.

After a while mother calls to me, her voice a ghostly echo in my mind that tells me to visit Grandma. My hand reaches out to a basket that is suddenly right there, sitting on the table and filled with food. My fingers curl around it and i smile softly to myself, a single genuine expression that for once lacks its usual flirty slant.

_I'm coming for you woodsman!_

I think, giddy and giggly and more than a little terrified.

I open the door, my hands no longer following my directions, taken over by an outside force, the promise of a warmly roaring campfire and a stranger's open arms begging me not to resist their pull.

So i don't.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So the mother thing? My headcanon has always been that you never see the mother because we ARE her. Or i guess, more accurately, the girl selection screen is her deciding which girl to send to Grandma's.


End file.
